A portion of the present disclosure contains material subject to copyright protection. Such material includes, but is not limited to, an Appendix entitled xe2x80x9cImp Specification protocols between Femto Engine and Terminalxe2x80x9d. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to data communications, and in particular to interactive two-way communication mobile devices that permit a user to interact with a network server providing hypermedia information through a data network. Such a data network can include, for example, the Internet and a wireless network. The mobile devices may include cellular telephones, two-way pagers, or a palm-sized computing devices and typically have limited computing resources.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet is a rapidly growing communication network of interconnected computers and computer networks around the world. Together, these connected computers form a vast repository of multimedia information that is readily accessible by the connected computers from anywhere at any time. To navigate a portion of the Internet organized as the xe2x80x9cWorld Wide Webxe2x80x9d, the connected computers, e.g., workstations and desktop computers, typically operate a user interface called a xe2x80x9cbrowserxe2x80x9d. A browser is a client application program that generally requests multimedia information throughout the Internet using, typically, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). A computer which operates a browser using HTTP is generally a relatively powerful computer with sufficient computing resources, such as processing power, memory, a display capability and a user interface.
To provide mobility and portability of access to the Internet, interactive two-way communication mobile devices capable of communicating, via wireless data networks, with the Internet have been introduced. The interactive two-way communication mobile devices (e.g., two-way pagers, cellular phones, palm-sized computing devices and personal digital assistants (PDAs)) are among the fastest emerging communication devices. These devices enable users to receive, collect, analyze, review and disseminate information as the users travel or move about. Unlike computers coupled to the Internet, the mobile devices are characterized by severe limitations in computing resources. For example, a cellular phone has less than one percent processing power of a typical desktop personal computer, generally less than 128 kilobytes of memory, an LCD display which is perhaps four lines high by twelve or twenty characters, and limited or non-existent graphics capabilities. Further, a cellular phone inputs using a keypad that has far fewer keys than a typical personal computer (PC) keyboard. With these constraints, a mobile device cannot efficiently operate the browser used by desktop computers to navigate the Internet.
To make available to mobile devices computing resources comparable to a desktop computer is too costly. There is, therefore, a great need for a solution that enables mobile devices to freely access information on the Internet without providing these computing resources in the mobile devices.
Additionally, mobile devices are typically serviced through one or more wireless service carriers. The wireless service carriers often provide additional services by upgrading client application programs in the mobile devices. In conventional computers, an upgrade can be accomplished by downloading a new version of an application program from a service provider. In mobile devices, downloading a new version of an application program can be a prohibitive task, limited by the performances of the computing resources and the wireless network. Hence, there is a further need for an ability to manage client application programs operated by the mobile devices.
The present invention addresses the above described problems and is particularly applicable to navigation of Internet web pages by two-way interactive communication mobile devices (e.g., mobile computing devices, cellular phones, palm-sized computer devices, personal digital assistant devices and Internet-capable appliance remote controllers) which are capable of wireless communication via a link server with service providers or network servers on the Internet. Despite the common deficiencies of mobile devices (i.e., a primitive processor, little memory and limited graphics capability) which make it economically and technically impractical for the mobile devices to operate a local browser functioning as if it was in a desktop computer, the present invention allows the mobile devices to interact effectively with the Internet and can be used with a wide variety of wireless communication networks (e.g., cellular digital packet data (CDPD) network, Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) network, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) network and Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) network).
According to one aspect of the present invention, a mobile device includes an interface engine that, via a client module, communicates and operates with a control engine in a link server device over a wireless network. The control engine, which utilizes the computing resources of the link server device, is responsible for tasks that require considerable computing power and memory, such as processing of URL requests, interpretation of markup language files, management of data cache and variable states. Further, working with a message processor in the server device, the control engine communicates with an interface engine using a compact data format that is efficiently transportable in the wireless data network. The interface engine typically performs tasks that do not require considerable computing power and memory, such as receiving input data from users, and the rendering of the compact data format received from the link server device, to cause the mobile device to display contents in the markup language files on a display screen.
According to another aspect of the present invention, incoming messages to the mobile device, including notification and requests, and which typically has one or more universal resource identifiers or locators, are processed in the link server device to generate compact messages. The link server device replaces universal resource locators in the incoming message with address identifiers, and manages an address table mapping each universal resource locator with an address identifier. Thus processed, the resulting compact messages demand less bandwidth of the wireless network, thus reducing high latency and requiring less air time.
According to still another aspect of the present invention, local service requests in the mobile device are processed simultaneously in the interface engine and the control engine. In the prior art, all local service requests are processed locally at the terminal where the local services are requested. The computing devices of the prior art, such as personal computers and workstations, can process local requests because of their computing power, memory and display capabilities. The mobile devices in the present invention, however, taking advantage of a cooperation between the interface engine and the control engine over the wireless network, services the requests with the limited computing resources of the mobile devices and without significantly compromising overall performance.
Thus, unlike the closed and proprietary prior art mobile devices (e.g., mobile phones and two-way pagers), the present invention allows thinly designed mobile devices to become open application platforms. Such an open application platform allows software developers to develop value-added applications and services to these thinly designed mobile devices. Consequently, many more new uses can be developed for two-way communication mobile devices and two-way communication networks, including wireless networks, without physical modification or addition to the two-way communication mobile device.
The present invention can be implemented in numerous ways. For example, according to one embodiment of this invention, a method of the present invention allows an interactive two-way communication mobile device with a display screen to interact with a network server. In this method, a control engine in a link server is initiated when the mobile device establishes a communication session with the link server. (Such a link server couples the network server of a landnet, which uses a first communication protocol, to a wireless network which uses a second communication protocol.) The link server includes: (a) an account manager managing a user account associated with the mobile device; and (b) a message processor receiving a message from the network server over the landnet. Upon initiation, the control engine communicates with an interface engine of the mobile device corresponding to the user account, and converts the message, using the message processor, to a compact data file that can be efficiently transportable in the wireless network.
According to another embodiment of this invention, in a method of the present invention, the link server sends over the wireless network a compact data file it generates, and the interface engine renders the compact data file to cause the display screen to display contents represented by the compact data file.
According to still another embodiment of this invention, a system of the present invention includes: (a) a memory for storing code for a server module; (b) a data storage device for maintaining a user account for the mobile device; and (c) a processor coupled to the memory and the data storage device. The processor executes the code in the memory to cause the server module to: (a) execute a control engine associated with an interface engine of a mobile device; (b) receive a network message from the network server over the landnet, using a first communication protocol; (c) buffer the network message in a cache memory; (d) generate a compact message from the network message; and (e) send the compact message to the mobile device over the wireless network, using a second communication protocol.
According to still another embodiment of this invention, a system of the present invention includes: (a) a display screen; (b) an input means; (c) a memory for storing code for a client module; and (d) a processor coupled to the memory and controlling the display screen and the input means. The processor executes code in the memory to cause the client module to: (a) execute an interface engine when activating a predefined key; (b) maintain the interface engine to work with a control engine operating in the link server device in concert; (c) receive a compact message from the link server device over a wireless network, wherein the compact message is generated by a message processor in the link server device according to a network message received from the network server over a landnet; and (d) render the compact message to cause the display screen to display contents in the network message.
Accordingly, one of the objects of this invention is to provide a generic solution to two-way communication mobile devices with limited computing resources to enable them to effectively interact with a landnet such as the Internet.
Other objects, together with the foregoing are attained in the exercise of the invention in the following description and resulting in the embodiment illustrated in the accompanying drawings.